Tagged By society

Moms: We Hear You Loud and Clear

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Updated to share two links revealing a reality different than what the conventional mom community experiences:

Ack! What’s going on? If I were a conspiracy theorist, I’d be convinced we were in the midst of a well-coordinated, full-on assault against those who can’t or don’t have children.

You may recall the judgmental Orlando Sentinel Mom’s at Work blog I referenced in my last post. Who knew it was the tip of the iceberg?
This week Mika Brzezinski weighs in.
Mika, Mika, Mika…I really expected more from you. We’re contemporaries. I watched you tackle tough topics as a reporter, saw you anchor the weekend national
news. Did you really write not one but two posts all but arguing that children are
essential to fulfillment
?

“Women face enough pressures and challenges in a workplace that is still depressingly biased against a female’s success. Add to that, the fact that the very thing many women I know find
most rewarding (having kids) is now frowned upon.”

Having kids is now frowned upon? Mika, you must be seriously distracted to have missed out of the whole mommy movement. Just check out Mom’s
Rising
or Mom 2.0 Summit or the Motherhood Project or Maria
Shriver’s latest report, A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything. As Melanie Notkin points out in her editor’s note on Savvy Auntie the report weirdly overlooked the fact that not all women are mothers:

“The study, meant to change the way government policy and businesses modernize with the new standing of women in the economy – a change I completely support – interchanges the word
“woman” with “mother” so often it’s as if all women are mothers.”

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Going Up!

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An an infertile (that’s right, all you “as a moms,” … we infertiles can invoke superiority, too!), I’m happy to report that there’s finally a movie coming to theater near you that contains
a story line that portrays infertiles as endearing, not selfish … sweet, not reviled or pitied.

Time magazine says the movie, Up, will
prove to be one of the most satisfying movie experiences of the year. Hallelujah! It’s about freakin‘ time. Hollywood has some serious making up to do for consistently negative story lines
about my people. Time‘s Richard Corliss writes:

“Spanning two continents and seven decades, Up begins in a 1930s movie theater. A newsreel tells us that famous explorer Charles Muntz (voiced by Christopher Plummer) is just back
from South America’s remote Paradise Falls with the bones of a prehistoric bird. Denounced as a fraud by archaeologists, Muntz vows to retrieve a member of the species and bring it back alive. In the
audience, wearing aviator goggles atop his thick-rimmed specs, is young Carl Fredricksen, who is enthralled by Muntz’s motto, ‘There’s adventure out there!’

“On the way home, Carl finds a kindred spirit: a girl named Ellie, as vivacious as he is stolid, who harbors the same dream of visiting Paradise Falls. It’s love at first sight, and in a
tender montage, Up shows us their life together: the wedding, the fixing up of their home, the quiet walks, their respective jobs at the local zoo (she tending the animals, he selling
balloons), their eager preparations for a child they later learn they can’t have, their need to defer the big trip to pay for home improvements, then her slowing pace and death. This series of
vignettes is played without dialogue and underscored by Michael Giacchino’s wistful waltz. It’s the sweetest, saddest 4 1⁄2 minutes you’ll ever see on film.”

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Momzilla Alert!

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Okay, this post is sure to rattle some, but look you’ve left me no choice.  I coined the term “Momzilla” over the holidays when I was trapped in a hair salon next to two women&hellip

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